Market for Electric Vehicle Batteries Is Heating Up 34 comments
Jeff Wilson
About this author: By this author:
-
Font Size:
-
Print
- TweetThis
With plug-in electric cars starting to ship, and many more scheduled to come online in the next few years, the market for electric vehicle batteries is heating up.
Electric vehicles put new demands on batteries. In particular, batteries need to hold a lot of energy (to go a long distance on a single charge) and they need to have a long life (years of dependable service).
Battery technology has progressed quickly, especially in the past decade. The familiar “car battery” (e.g. the Sears Diehard) has been with us for over a century. It is heavy and doesn’t hold a lot of energy, which is to say that a car powered with lead-acid batteries won’t go far on a single charge. In addition, the battery is likely to wear out after only a few hundred charge/discharge cycles.
Next came NiCad (nickel-cadmium) batteries. These are what power your electric shaver and your cordless phone. They hold more energy per pound than lead-acid batteries, and can go thru several hundred charge/discharge cycles. A peculiar downside is that they have a “memory effect” where they loose their power-holding capacity if they aren’t fully discharged before being recharged.
The big breakthrough was NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries. This technology was developed by a very bright and energetic older gentleman named Stanford Ovshinsky. It was truly a game changer. NiMH batteries were first tried in the electric vehicles used in California several years ago. In 1999, General Motors used NiMH batteries in the EV-1 electric vehicle, giving the car a range of 140 miles. Southern California Edison put a combined 7 million miles on 320 electric Toyota RAV4’s, and concluded that the NiMH battery would last 130,000 to 150,000 miles. Ovonics was acquired by Energy Conversion Devices (NASDAQ: ENER). In 1994, GM bought 60% of ECD, and then in 2000 Texaco bought GM’s share of ECD, and in a 50/50 partnership with ECD, created a spinoff battery company called Cobasys (which owns the patent to NiMH technology). Shortly thereafter, Texaco was acquired by Chevron (NYSE: CVX).
Carmakers today are mostly focused on lithium batteries. In the past several years lithium batteries have become the standard for laptops and cell phones, because they hold the most charge of commonly available batteries. Tesla Motors, which started shipping it’s first electric car this year, leveraged the existing battery technology by making a battery pack out of 6800 lithium batteries, each of which are about the size of a standard “AA” penlight battery.
Three other companies are working on lithium battery technology for electric vehicles. General Electric (NYSE: GE) has become an investor in A123 Systems. A123 has developed a technology called Nanophosphate™ lithium ion. In March of this year the Norwegian electric car maker Think signed a contract with A123 to supply batteries for one of its cars. A123 is also under consideration as a supplier for the new Chevy Volt.
Electrovaya (Toronto: ELF.TO) has licensed Exxon Mobil’s (NYSE: XOM) new lithium battery membrane technology. Electrovaya will be producing some electric vehicles itself, and has also contracted to supply lithium batteries to carmakers Tata and Miljo from a manufacturing facility in Norway.
Altair Nanotechnologies (NASDAQ: ALTI) has developed a lithium battery technology called Nanosafe™. Altair is supplying batteries to carmaker Phoenix Motorcars. The outstanding thing about the Altair batteries is how quickly they can be charged. The cars produced by Phoenix can go 130 to 250 miles on a charge, but can be recharged in as little as 10 minutes. This is likely to be a game changer for electric cars in general, and set a new standard that all electric automakers must strive toward.
Disclosure: none
Related Articles
|
-
The Seeking Alpha 100
See allThe top 100 stock
market authors
selected for publication
Seeking Alpha 100 » -
Fastest Climbers
Authors with the largestSee all
increase in followers
in the last 7 days
Fastest Climbers » -
Top Commenters
Top commenters,See all
as ranked by their peers
Top Commenters » -
Top Instabloggers
The 100 most activeSee all
Instabloggers.
Top Instabloggers » -
Top StockTalkers
TopSee all
StockTalkers.
Top StockTalkers »
This article has 34 comments:
Check out michigansolarsolutions... - mss blog and fun facts sections
news.cnet.com/8301-111...
however, as someone earlier pointed out, these electric transportation solutions need charging, and a back of the envelop calculation on replacting just 25% of our foreign imports used for gasoline is one tremendous energy challenge. that is why the *only* economically viable solution for a country as energy challenged as the US is a strategic, long-term, comprehensive energy policy like this one:
thefitzman.blogspot.co...
I am impressed that it is possible to charge a large powerful bank of batteries in 10 minutes, but I am doubtful that most home circuits can handle that rate without expensive upgrades. I don't know, but I suspect that it would be greater than the equivalent of me turning on every appliance I have. The neighborhood I live in has already suffered outages that were due to increased usage. The upgrade to handle it has been very expensive. Rents have gone up as a result because it is a micro-utility. I would appreciate some mention of the cost to handle such large loads if a large percentage of autos were electric Are there estimates from the power companies?
A typical 15A, 110V house circuit can provide about 1.5 kilowatts (kW). So from midnight to 6 am, this circuit could provide a 9 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of recharge, which would give 45 miles of electric range for a Prius sized car or 25 to 30 miles of range for a Ford Escape sized EV.
These ranges are adequate for PHEVs since the average daily commute is less than 25 miles. If you want a 10-minute, 9 kWh recharge at home, you would need a 54 kW power source which exceeds a modern home's power panel total capability of 200A at 220V, or 44kW.
The power grid is quite capable of supporting a large population of PHEVs which are recharged overnight. This is the conclusion of a 2006 study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, under the U.S. Department of Energy:
"For the United States as a whole, up to 84% of U.S. cars, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) could be supported by the existing infrastructure, although the local percentages vary by region. Using the LDV fleet classification, which includes cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans, the technical potential is 73%. This has an estimated gasoline displacement potential of 6.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, or approximately 52% of the nation’s oil imports."
www.pnl.gov/energy/eed...
On Nov 02 02:02 PM vpratt wrote:
> It looks like this will be a long, difficult shakeout for investors
> to navigate.
> I am impressed that it is possible to charge a large powerful bank
> of batteries in 10 minutes, but I am doubtful that most home circuits
> can handle that rate without expensive upgrades. I don't know, but
> I suspect that it would be greater than the equivalent of me turning
> on every appliance I have. The neighborhood I live in has already
> suffered outages that were due to increased usage. The upgrade to
> handle it has been very expensive. Rents have gone up as a result
> because it is a micro-utility. I would appreciate some mention of
> the cost to handle such large loads if a large percentage of autos
> were electric Are there estimates from the power companies?
your book sounds interesting- I am wondering why there is not a mention of Geothermal Power plants in the link that describes your book? Have you included them in your research? If not, I recommend you do some research- it is not new technology, instead it is well-proven, and enjoying a tremendous resurgence in interest , and we have terrific resources to support it. Newer "Binary" method makes it possible to be 100% green, and also allows use of cooler-temperature resource to produce electricity. Another big advantage is they produce power 24/7 - and prices are some of the lowest, competitive with gas and coal plants, but with NO pollution.
geothermal - the brines coproduced with the electricity are toxic and corrosive. there will be a disposal expense.
> jack
I am proud to say that the nano battery does have a life the testing indicates at least a 25 yr life and possibly more in the labs, the recharge time is 10 minutes full charge using 440v which indicates that the charging will need to be done at service stations wired up for this kind of power distribution and not at normal home setups. However you will be able to use 220v at home and it will take around 6 hrs to recharge battery then. (while you sleep at night). Their current released batteries available to the public motor cos will do 140 and 250 miles per charge.
So this is one battery that is ready for the public vehicle mkt and charging infrastructure is easy to set up rapidly nationwide if special interest and politics don't delay or prevent it from happening soon. I also suggested to both candidates to build a nation wide 50 state (like the interstate hwy system was done) electric bullet train system to go coast to coast in 4 hrs on expresss trains and regular eurorail like trains for stopping at large towns to towns rail systems for freight and passengers. This would provide a large employment gain to our nation be a crash program and reduce our forgein oil imports by 20 to 25% within 10 yrs if we stop the political BS and delays and get with it. It will certainly have a big impact on the U.S. global warming status favorably.
It will take you and all the american people to demand getting our sold out to special interest politicians to work on ouur countries behalf first and stop playing theatre to the folks and media. We can do it all within 10 to 15 yrs max if we are reallu dtermined to win big once again. PS. All contracts & contractors for this infrastructure program must make the equipment and have plants here in america to get a contract. The bailout will be a thing of the past, if we let natural economic law & mkt do it way of solving the bad decisions, greed and corruption of bad ceo's and cos, whose doors should close up or slim dow severly with new leaders, including directors working on shareholders behalf and not their pockets first. Yes we will have some pain due to stupidity of many, but America can do great things when its people select good leaders and we all keep the heat to their rears to make wise decisions in energy and use of natural ecomic law and solving many of our current problems. WE CA DO IT NOW!!
LEAD ACID BATTERIES,,,WE DROVE THAT CAALL OVER THE WORLD
HOT AND COLD , AND ;YOU KNOW WE COULD RECHARGE IN 8 HOURS AT 120 AND 5 HOURS ON 220,, MY QUESTION IS IF WE COULD DO THIS BACK 30 YEAR'S AGO, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG TODAY, AND I WOULD HAVE TO BE PROVEN ON THE MILEAGE THEY SAY THEY ARE GETTING WHEN THEY TALK 140 TO OVER 200 PER CHARGE, MY ELECTRIC CAR THAT I DRIVE TODAY GET OVER 100 MILES ON A CHARGE AND IT LOOKS LIKE A DENO.
THANKS
TOM MITCHELL
THOMASMITCHELL38@SPRIN...
Why no mention of Ener1 Inc? They are also making batteries for the Th!nk EV. In fact they have recently received a 35mill order from Th!nk for batteries. Has A123 received such a large order? No anouncements since March?
Do you have any inkling what that transfer of knowledge entailed. We won;t go into China and small batteries, you don't work with cars? So far thats what has happened but would like to know for sure.
On Nov 02 05:32 PM User 290300 wrote:
> I think they should be a 500 mile race similar to the Indy race but
> only battery operated cars can race. This would give a quicker advance
> into the technology needed to push the industry. Make the purse
> huge enough to get a lot of interest.
Consumers will be happy, those that lose their jobs won't.
Auto Insurers won't have a clue as how to insure them. New Liability claims, they won't make a sound, the Blind will have major problems
Fred from the EV talk capitol of MA
<P>
Almost all recently built houses here in the U.S. have 240V 100A service which should be sufficient to recharge an electric car completely overnight, even when electricity is being used for other purposes as well.
Hopefully that will not deter the development of electric car for the masses.
Hopefully that will not deter the development of electric car for the masses.
<P>
There is some question about the availability of lithium. According to some sources, there would be insufficient supply; according to other sources, there would be enough. However, there are battery technologies which do not require lithium so, if a shortage of lithium developed, it is possible that the problem could be solved by using other types of batteries.
Check out this link to read the news. This is so exciting for those who realize the importance of seeing out country transfrom away from fossil fuels and to cleaner, cheaper electric cars. I read about this in the author's book after I heard him on a radio talk show interview. I am thrilled and surpriesed to see it taking place so soon. Link to news story below or simply type electric car infrastructure california or Better Place into search engine. freep.com/article/...